Two sleepless days for Codecraft

So, the day has come. Threads is going to start today. And start in a big way. Hopefully. So, this is morning. The whole night was spent in deciding and redefining the questions. Also went to Nift fashion show yesterday evening. Well, the brouhaha was okay, but i seriously did not quite understand the concept of the fashion as they defined it.
Coming back to Threads. I hope no hiccups would be encountered. Codecraft starts and ends today. Just finished its questions. Cache-in starts tomorrow. Yet to write its story. And nothing much done regarding the other events, which are going to follow these.
A very very very busy and hectic and other such synonymns...week ahead. :). What with Threads starting today and Felicity in a few days, not to mention my perenially stuck project. Have started regarding Felicity and Threads separately these days. Though i had vehemantly opposed the idea of having a separate techfest this time, i think it would be better to have them separate next year. Threads seems to have found its niche. and looking after the techfest is no easy job. Learnt it the hard way. Time to have some breakfast. The sun too has shown his face now.

Rain rocks...

Well, rain really rocks. It feels good to smell it. It feels good to hear it. It feels good to experience it. I do not dread getting wet in the rain. But the irritating part is that if i do get wet, i also almost go blind. All i can see would be blurry shapes. Blurred due to the water playing on my glasses. When will they invent water-repelling glasses ?
Today has been quite a leisurely day. I could even watch a movie: I, Robot (had stored it on my pc for almost half an year now :D ). This leisure is not due to any luck or something of that sort. Its not that i had nothing to do. It was more like i was not capable of doing anything. Didnt have the strength. Just a few discussions related to Threads.
The first 'Threads' poster adorns my wall. It also has the distinction of being the first poster to be put up anywhere. That is the first poster of this year's Felicity which also includes Threads.
Whenever the weather is good like this, with nice cool wind and a rainy scent garnishing it, i feel like going for a walk. But i dont want to go for a walk alone. It gets too boring. But none of my regular walk-mates are around. :(
I have been checking the mail from the afternoon but havent recieved a single one. I think i now qualify as that pc-freak that innumerable internet jokes make fun of. The first thing i do on getting up in the morning is check mail! Before even my eyes are barely open. The first thing i look at when i enter my room is the monitor screen. I think the only time i spend away from a computer is when i sleep. Even that sleep time is decreasing now. But strangely when i go home every weekend, i stay away from anything even remotely equivalent to a pc for a whole day. Yet, i am not reminded of a computer then. Not even once. I guess, my going-home routine helps me stay sane. To think that i hadnt even used a computer a couple of years back. Really, home recharges my batteries because all i do at home is sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, eat and then sleep again. :)
But, when i have a vacation, that is on a longer stay at home, i start missing my room. Not my pc. But my room! I guess i miss the independence that it gives me rather than it's walls and windows.
Well, i looks like i am pretty settled currently. With this room, my home, this computer and my life as such. But it will all change again in a couple of years. A new begining has to be made again.
Something new is what makes something interesting. Anything perennial is boring. But change is what is most feared. Why? Because we fear the unknown. Everyone walks into a new territory apprehensively. Slowly or maybe immediately they get used to it and again start being wary of change.
But something new is what makes something interesting....

Intentionally left blank...

...courtesy _Su_.
I dont want to crib. I dont want to comment. Neither do i want to sleep. Hence i blog.
There are two types of people. One boasts, the other cribs. I guess there is a third group which does neither, but we are ignoring them since we have nothing to write about them. Well nothing to write about the these two types either. So we abandon this train of thought. A train that was speeding into the abyss. So waiting at the station now, waiting for another train. As usual, the train is running late. I guess if its even running at all. Must be snoring somewhere i suppose. Well, to catch a snoring train, we will need to snore too. Bed, bed wher art thou?

Perennially exhausted..

what is going on? i know. Threads and Felicity are eating up a lot of my time. For the ignoramous just check out http://felicity.iiit.ac.in . Any rest of time, i am being left with is gone in a whoosh. No idea where it runs away to. Another project is starting now. The most tough part about a project is to decide the project. Especially when there are no options, when you are expected to come up with the problem statement. A problem statement that no one had thought of before or has not solved before. Lost in all this, i neglected my most important thing. That is my rescue project. Less than a month now to its deadline. And a load of things to do. And the coming days are not going to be any less hectic. Where am i going ??
Atleast have been able to read newspaper these days. Thankfully. So, why did India refuse foreign aid? Was it right in doing so? Well, if we are giving aid to Sri lanka, Maldives etc, then that surely means that we are quite capable of aiding ourselves.
Dean's list released. I thought they had totally done away with it. As is said, Better late than never.
Am i seriously going to hoist the flag? Its actually scary. I was actually bewildered when i heard that. Actually did a double take. On the phone. It went like this -

Her - Invite you to come on the republic day..
Me - Oh sure! teacher...
Her - to hoist the flag..
Me - I ll be comingggggggg
Me - what! did u say hoist ?
Her - Yes, hoist the ....
Me - hoist!!!
Me - what ??

And then she explained the concept which was calling the alumni (illustrous i hope) for hoisting the flag during the Independence and Republic Days. Wow! Hoist the national flag indeed! I dont know from where my school gets these ideas. As if this wasnt enough, she added that i also need to address the students.
Address the students!!!! What!!! I was getting scared by the minute. She tried to reassure saying ," nothing much just a few minutes, no need of any worked upon speech or anything. "
Worked upon speech indeed...
I left the matter there, will think about it later....
Oops got to go now, a lot of work ahead. Need to meet someone now.
When will the day come when i wont have anything to do? Not soon. Not soon at all :((

............................

Well, i spent a few minutes trying to think of a title in vain. Guess that dots will have to do. So today or rather yesterday was the day that i wrote three back to back exams. Cool eh? Actually the exams were cool since any reading was not required to answer the questions in any of the three tests. And then went out of the institute at aruond 5 only to return after midnight. Hunting for Sponsors and then off to a movie. a bad decision actually (with ref to the movie). So you find this tired and drowsy guy with eyes burning (not with anger :D) trying to write a post so that one more is added to his blog.
Now again, am having to think what to write...yawn. A very boring post.

Want to write a long post...

But what should i write in it? Nothing much. Rescue everywhere. One side, is the institute's initiative to help those disaster victims and on the other hand is my rescue project which is in dire need of a rescue operation. I am a witness to my friend's desperate efforts towards collecting money from the students to donate for relief fund. Of the hundred in our class, just more than fifty have contriuted, each an average of around 150. And this high figure of 50 has been achieved due the untiring efforts of my dear friend who used to remind any and every person he met that they are yet to contribute towards the fund. And in the morning he barged into my room and gladly announced that our batch's contribution exceeded 10K. 10K? Just? That would translate to 100 per person! But then again, there are many reasons from the other side mainly that the parents have done their bit etc etc. And its true too. I think anyone would think twice before dontaing their parents money just like that. Thankfully i didnt have to think in similar lines. But then again, maybe the people can contribute by not utilising the money that they generally use it for. Eat in the mess or dont eat at all instead of going to the restaurant and splurging. And i have found that those who havent contributed are mainly those who do the above. Well, the same argument can be held against Felicity. So, my argument is totally wrong. Because i cant forego Felicity. No way!
As regarding the other rescue, well this post needs to end here since i need to start the rescue operations. :)

It really sucks

When u find the normally cheerful faces looking around blankly engulfed in deep musing. The worse part is that you dont know what to say. No way of consoling them since you have no idea how they must be feeling. You cannot console them because it is not their fault. Nothing feels normal. All that you can do is maybe stand around giving silent support. The questions that rose in my head were, should i discuss about the matter with them? No, it would only add to the pain. So, what should i do? Nothing as usual

Just Blogging

Writing a post now because i felt it would be better than finding out what is an Interval Tree, what is an Segment tree and how they would be useful to solve the assigment. Yeah, assignments already. Lots of them. What the difference then? Nothing. Its always the same.
Threads. The name of the College techfest which is part of Felicity (the annual IIIT techno-cultural festival). Sent a mail to students asking for people interested in organising any events for Threads. Many seemed extremely interested. Hence i got just 25 replies out of 800 students. Tch tch. Well as if that large number is not sufficient, most of them want to organise only the top two online events!! As if the other events didnt exist. Anyways, an hours hard work paid off and most of the events are now proud of their organisers. Just that, i havent informed the soon-to-be-organisers that they have been given so and so event. Before doing that, i need to ask a few personally whether they would be willing to organise so and so event. The rest of them would be informed of their predicatment through the impersonal mail. A mail which wouldnt event contain my name so that they wouldnt know whom to lodge their protest with.
Whatever, i just hope Threads is a success. Lets hope that Threads yarns a success story. :)

happy new year....

So. a new year has come. 2005 AD it is beig called. So whats new? Just another day. The sun would continue to rise same as before etc etc. But what is the difference? New year resolutions! Why should they be any. I mean why specifically for new year? We can make any resolutions any time we want. And break them anytime too. The only difference i find is that i need to write down the date carefully. Its no longer -04 but -05. Thats it. But anyway, everyone wishes everyone 'happy new year'. And I reciprocate. Why? Because thats the norm. Does the new year signify a new begining as it is made out to be? This is turning out to be quite a boring post.
Enjoy life. Be it new year or old.

Going home.......

Again...yes. Will return at the restart of the sem. Did some good work in my project yesterday (actually day-before-yesterday). Worked hard today morning but it was an unsuccesful idea. Need better ideas.........
Went to school on Christmas day. That is the annual alumni meet. Alumni meet! Our class contained only 40 students and we were just the 5th batch. So, its pretty evident the number of alumni that we have:D. Anyway 100 people showed up. Couldnt recognise most of the people. The only people i seem to remember are our immediate senior batch. Ofcourse, my class too. I wont forget them. Was able to recognise most of the immediate juniors but couldnt recollect their names. Well what else can you expect if you had the minimal interaction that is possible. Going to these meets every year doesnt seem to be helping either. The achievements of the alumni were a few jobs and mostly seats in good institutions. Good institutions would translate to national institutions in Engineering and any institution offering Mbbs. And all such succesful persons were asked to share a few words. My friend's advice was - 'dont study much.' This advice was given to those who are experiencing hell-on-earth in those famed corporate intermediate colleges. I was more restrained and just told them to enjoy whatever they did. I dont think anyone listened to it anyway.

"The people of this country survive on hope and hype" ..... now who could be the contributor of this quotation??

Notice : This is the last post on this blog.
in the year 2004 AD i.e.

How am i going to ring-in the new year?
By doing one of my favourite things.....Sleep.
Btw, Happy New Year!

Tragedies everywhere......

Yes...i am back again..another short stay. Have been watching and reading about the Disaster a lot. Feel very bad. The jump in the numbers is really shocking. And then if you consider that each of those that make up those numbers is not just a dead person but a great numbing loss to a family, most probably a poor one, its really really ...what can i say. And then comes the fact of the rescue operations. A massive rescue operation is underway. Mass graves are being dug! A lot of people are still missing. And a lot of people will be missed forever. And what can we do? A small monetary contribution at the maximum. People go on about their lives. Reading the news as they would any other. Maybe sometimes discuss the tragedy with their friends, make a small contribution, rarely. Yeah, relief organisations have rushed to the affected areas, aid has been rushed etc etc. But, thats it. A few voluntary workers are facing the hardships which they neednt face and helping those who had to face the consequences of a small hiccup of this mother earth. The most tragic part is that most of the people who are suffering are so poor that they had to struggle for their daily existence even before the waves turned murderers. Those same waves, to see which, to experience which, to enjoy which people have travelled half way across the world and ended up at Thailand and Sri lanka.
A lot of things i found to distaste. One being that the news people report that some 10,000 are dead in Srilanka and then in the same breath say that some 40 tourists are missing in Thailand. Not just that, they also covered a story about a tourist stranded there who is planning to wait a few more days and make something of his supposed vacation. Okay, maybe they need other stories than just dead numbers, but i feel that, maybe i imagine a difference in the way the news is reported about the dead fishermen and the dead tourists.
Anyways, what am i doing about it, the disaster i mean. Nothing. Maybe filling some blogspace and also spending some of my time reading about it. None of these actions is going to be of any benefit to those out there. At this moment, i wonder, why do people have wars and riots, shouldnt those energies be better utilised in fighting against the evil side of nature? Ofcourse, but that doesnt mean that the people would drop their guns and trishuls. Nothing is going to change. Yeah, other than the duration of the day (according to some news).

We didnt win........

But we did come second....They gave us some sort of mementos and a small trophy. They mentioned a lot of times that maybe we should have used more time. Afterall, we didnt even use half the time. But it doesnt matter. I cant see how more time would have made any change. I guess they didnt like our 'confidence'. Btw, along with those things they also awarded us each 7k. So that make my total earnings till now in my life to be around 18k. All in less than 8 months. Hope it continues. :D
But should i say that i lost 3k? Because the winners got 10k each. And i still think that we should have won. Thanks Jaggu n Anubhav.

Back from the contest...

Yeah....just back from the contest. It was a programming contest. Scheduled from 9am to 9pm. Yes 12 hours. Just one question. Our programming efficiency, techniques, style, documentation, approach and design (not in any order) would be evaluated. We were supposed to report at the centre at 8:30am. It is conducted by a Company, so the way it is organised is pretty good. Typical IIITians that we were, we arrived at the centre at 9. We actually got confused and first went to another office of theirs, which was in the same area, then we were redirected to the actual venue where the contest was being held. Reading the problem and understanding it, and a doubts clarification session went on till 10. Then the three of us actually started discussing the algorithm that we need to apply. We concluded that it would need a Dijkstra with a slight modification for the cost. Actually more than a slight modification, i guess. Anyways, it did look surprising that they gave just this one problem for whole 12 hours. We had the thrice ACM-returned Jagan in our team. So he implemented the Heap quite quickly, by which time, the rest two of us finalised on the final algorithm. They gave us Windows to work on. That was a major difficulty. Though to make the task easier, they did give the unix simulator cygwin. So, the code was compilation error free by 12:30. And it worked at the first attempt!!! Ofcourse we already checked the heap. But i thought that we would atleast make a few logical errors. But i guess, three people looking at the same screen parallelly minimises that probability. Then we started testing with a few more cases. Verifying the output is slightly painstaking. We did not find any error. So then we modularised it and ate our lunch. Removed the unnnecessary part, commented and wrote the required documentation. Meanwhile, the volunteers came to know that we seemed to have finished it, well within half the given time. so many of them used to come and see the output etc. Everything seemed to have been over by 3. I guess we could have written more about our approach and design whatever, but we limited it to what was essential. Jagan was already getting ready to leave. So we left at 3:30, though the contest is suppposed to end at 9pm.
The result will be known tomorrow i guess. I hope we win. I cant find any problem with the code. But the problem seems so simple, that many teams would be able to solve it i guess. But then, what would be their selection criteria. I just hope we win........ Atleast we were the first to complete it.
Well.....though i didnt contribute much, i seem to be very tired. Back to bed.

Yes...back for a few more days

Started on the project with lots of raging doubts. Had many a thought of dropping it, especially looking at the discussion by the other teams, i stand nowhere compared to them. But am currently trying to do something. Going to a contest tomorrow. No, it has nothing to do with my project. Representing the College along with two seniors. Hopefully will do well. Will blog tomorrow...hopefully again...

Back.....just temporarily

so, dont worry, i will go back soon. Actually tomorrow morning. Dont worry again. I ll be back next week. And will stay for some time. Its really lonely here. With the population having dwindled to one-tenth of the usual, it has to be lonely i guess. I am still stuck with the problem. Have no idea what i am going to do. The actual problem is actually very simple. The cause is also very simple. Lack of proper work on my part and my project partners in the preceding sem. It has now landed me in a soup. Then i had two others also to share my work. And in the whole sem what we actually accomplished comes to some 15% of what is the total work required. Now, a few days back, just before i went home, i found out that i need to complete the rest 85% by feb 1st. And the deadline cant be extended because it is in no one's hands. :((
Well, if it had been clear what i needed to do, maybe i could accomplish it. But, i have no idea what the 50% of the 85% should be. I have no idea whatsoever. To top it all of, i am alone now. What can be worse? Yeah, my project guide has no idea about my present predicament. I dare not let him now. I m in really really deep deep deep mess. With no way out. Quite a pessimist, am i not?

I felt like writing a poem. Wrote two lines. They sucked so much that i abandoned the effort and hastily deleted the two lines :D

There was a time
when all was well
the clock would chime
and ring would the bell

The people worked hard
faithfully and happily
there wasnt a soul sad
everything was just jolly

Then came the dark clouds
A large army descended
harsh and cruel crowds
everything now, they commanded


With the dark clouds
came the white shrouds
people started to fear
frightened to even come near

they hid in their homes
their farms withered away
the whole village mourns
the price they had to pay

Price that they paid
for not being prepared
for what befall them
no army had they ever reared

Suffering quietly they waited
waited for a saviour
a saviour they waited
with a lot of fervour

Soon they gave up hope
started to live again
accepting the fate, learning to cope
the freedom, a dream remain

I will end the poem here, a sad ending to reflect my sad mood :D:D
Will some one please title my poems ??? Pleaeaeaeasssseeeeee. Or maybe they arent even worth to be titled? I guess so. Atleast i wouldnt spend time on it. :D
So this blog officially ends here.
Unofficially, the two lines i initially wrote without an iota of thought were -
A flickering light
slick......now i dont even remember...cool :)

Finally away from the Computer

For a week. Going home. Will blog again next week

Hopeless...totally hope....

I was frustrated too early. I shouldnt have been frustrated in the last post. Because if i was frustrated then, now what should i be? I cant find any appropriate adjective. Helpless. Hopeless. Tired...Yes tired. Tired of it all. Of everything. I dont want to sit in front of this computer. Or for that matter any computer. It has become the only way of life. To talk to your neighbour, you use yahoo. To vent your frustration you use blogspot. What is the purpose. Everything comes with the digital signature. Digital everything. I just want to go out and smell the air. Not roses, dont really like them.
I am gone. Totally gone. This is the end